Anti-corruption is a priority of the Norwegian international cooperation, and this message is clearly transmitted to young Norwegian Junior Professional Officers and diplomats-to-be during their induction training at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA). However, what anti-corruption actually means and implies, and how anti-corruption policies can or should be designed and implemented on the ground is far from obvious or straight-forward.

 

OGC’s Global Programme on Democratic Governance Assessments was invited by the MFA to share some of UNDP’s principles, knowledge and experience on corruption and anti-corruption policies and programmes. The Global Programme team members who conducted the training session presented a broad vision of UNDP’s anti-corruption work, starting with the definition of concepts and key international legal instruments, all the way to real, local examples of successful or unsuccessful initiatives in fighting corruption on the ground in developing countries, and the lessons learned from them.

 

The participants were also asked to provide examples of corruption and anti-corruption from their own experiences, and contributed with very interesting, personally-lived relevant stories. The abundant questions from the audience to the Global Programme team members, notably related to the challenges of assessing corruption and the issue of local ownership of anti-corruption programmes or projects, resulted in a particularly rich discussion.

 

This training session received highly positive feedback from the participants, as it was judged one of the most interesting and useful of the course, and it has been decided to repeat it in similar induction trainings, as a natural part of the collaboration between OGC and the Norwegian MFA.        

 

Download UNDP’s Users’ Guide to Measuring Corruption here.

 

Download the brochure on UNDP’s Global Programme Thematic Programme on Anti-Corruption for Development Effectiveness (PACDE) here.   

 

Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oslo

Photo: Ministry of Foreign Affairs